CHAP. VII.] OUTPOSTS OF QANDAHAR. 143 scarp. It had a gate named Ali Qábi.* Proceed- ing along the city wall from the north-eastern corner of the ridge where the wall first leaves the hill, we come in succession to the gates of Baba Wali, Waisqaran, Khwajah Khizir, and Mashuri, till at last the wall strikes the ridge again at the south-western corner of the fort, where stood an earth-work bastion and a redoubt (hissar).† The outposts of the province in the direction of Persia were Kushk-i-Nakhud, situated about 40 miles west of Qandahar on the right bank of a tributary of the Helmand which drains the Maiwand valley, the fort of Bist, 50 miles further west on the margin of the Helmand, and Zamin Dawar, north-west of Bist. The Persian frontier station was Girishk, some thirty miles up the Helmand from Bist. Aurangzib arrived before Qandahar and began the siege on 16th May, 1649. The Mughals completed their Siege begun.
- So far as we can judge from the Persian accounts,
Qaitul was the name of the whole ridge. At places it looks as if it were a peak identical with or adjacent to Lakah, but the Adab-i-Alamgiri, 12b, distinctly calls the whole ridge the hill of Qaitul. + For the gates, Waris, 246, 286, 65a; Adab-i-Alamgiri, 12b, 14a. Holdich's Gates of India, 204, Purchas, i. 519-528 (quoted in Kerr's Voyages and Travels, ix). Ain-i-Akbari (Jarrett), ii. 393-398. Digitized by Microsoft Ⓡ
